Reflection

To be blunt, I hated my experience as a learner in this course, and that was one of the best things I learned from it. The content was relevant to me as an aspiring leader, but everything about the way it was taught was a model of precisely what I aspire not to do as a teacher. The instructor talked about her personal life to an extent that was uncomfortable, and hugely irrelevant to the content of the course. We read a textbook that was dry and poorly/overly used, and the assignments we completed did not involve applying the material in a creative way, but simply required correct answers. There are many fascinating, diverse thinkers on leadership writing today, but we did not engage with the wider conversation about leadership. Rather, we focused on dealing with interpersonal problems and personality types. I felt, when in class, that I was wasting my time.

The most useful learning from the content of this course was the assignment to interview a library director (my paper is included in Work Samples below). Through conversation and reflection I could look for how some of the principles I was learning in class were applied in the real world. However, there were 20 students in the class and we never had the opportunity to share our interview experiences and learning with our classmates. This seems like a huge missed opportunity for shared learning, and broadening the knowledge base in the class. It seems like a failure of leadership.

Ultimately, the course I'm taking this semester on Leadership and Technology is reinforcing the shortcomings of this course. Despite the fact that it is online and this was face to face, I already have had deeper conversations and sharing with my classmates about our leadership journeys, and I am learning infinitely more from a wide variety of experts through participation in the Innovators' Mindset massive open online course. My key takeaway is that so much learning comes from being in a community of learners and sharing with your peers.